controlling the entire publishing industry. without independent bookstores that will be the powerhouse. they are not put people. there are internet people. i don't think we want them making the decisions on what gets published and what gets out -- what it's advertised. and i see that as a really big threat. if you want an independent bookstore in your community you have to go and shop with the independent bookstore. it may not stay there forever while you're shopping online or doing something you might find convenient. you can go online and have an hour or until you what to read next. that does not compare to going into a store, browsing, finding something unexpected, finding something new by favorite author that you did not know about, coming into a store that feels natural in order to just kind of grow organically and have the real personal feel. ..

to promote books and reading and libraries and literacy. we do so through programs not only this lecture series called books and beyond, but also

through a network of state centers that exists in each state and also a second network of national partners, nonprofits that share our interest in books and reading. we are also deeply involved in the national book festival, and atacama announce we finally have a date for the next national book festival which is quick to be september 27th this year. we have one small difficulty and that is because the park service's renovation and a receding of the mall we are down to a four blocks rather than the usual seven, but i am happy to say it looks like we are going to be packing and all of the pavilions and go fullscale stretching out to the streets near the reflecting pool and other places near the edges. today we are lucky to talk about a subject of great interest especially in the view of the forthcoming election. his talk will be filmed not only

by c-span but also the library of congress for the website and for that reason i would like to remind you to turn off all things electronic and second, that in the question and answer series -- session that we will have at the latter part of the talk we hope that he will ask questions. don has lots of answers but when you do ask your question, you are also giving us permission to use your image and your words in the various broadcast media that will be looking towards once this talk is completed. don has a long history as you know as most of the people in the room know as a historian he associate historian for the u.s. senate and for many years he's been writing books about politics, about history, the press in particular, and i

jumped into my own collection at home and during the signing session that would have for today's bouck which of course is editing fdr, the new deal campaign of 1930 to with the press gallery which reflect the subtitle congress in the washington correspondents and it's amazing that is also the is an area where don has developed his knowledge and his way of thinking about congress and the strict application of oral history and to put it in the perspective which through his books survived. one of the purposes of the talks actually is to demonstrate how resources of libraries and in particular the library of congress are used by scholars to point out all of the effort that we going to in kettering the collections when the working of the historians and library hands

for the public sometimes has a pay off in a real book and a book that will live and be shared by many and that of course is what will happen to not only done's books but also to the experience of fdr and the election of 1930 to which we are interpreting and reinterpreting, and we have a wonderful speaker to help us with this. associate historian of the year donald ritchie. don? [applause] >> we have a great crowd here today. very thankful you all can now. surprising because here we are in the middle of a huge presidential election so later we hear talk about an election that happened 75 years ago? i think there is relevant to that and certainly it's an important election if you look at the scope of things it not

only changed the political fortune of the two parties for a very long time but also the eddy logical direction of the federal government. it created a new deal in the political coalition that had a tremendous impact on the american political system and it put into office one of the people that ranked the highest on our public opinion polls or the historians polls in the top three, and it instituted a whole series of reform in his administration that are still in effect in the federal government. when i was beginning this i opened the u.s. manual and just went down the list of all of the agencies that were created between 1933 and 1945, and there's quite a staff of them as a result. that is just getting at is a historical event is one thing. it seems to me though that we can ask what is relevant in an explanation that it offers are

to the current political process as well. i start with a quote from mark twain who says that history doesn't repeat itself. at best it sometimes rhymes. it's true that the election of 1932 dealt with deep depression and franklin roosevelt and his very death campaign against a very administration of herbert hoover, so those particular incidents and people are not going to be repeated, but it certainly suggests a number of political refrain that we will see through this year as well and how to the candidates and how does the public respond when issues shift from cultural issues which had dominated the previous three elections to economic issues that dominated in 1932 and it also suggests fax politicians will always do well never to underestimate their opposition.

the other quote that informed my research i heard as i was driving to work one day it was just rescheduling at enron who said the trouble with history is that it tells you what happened but not what might have happened. and i thought that is a good model for studying and election because we start with the knowledge of who won the election so there isn't a lot of room for a suspense and telling the story but the trouble with this is that your assumption is because you know at the end that the end was inevitable, that it had to happen that way and there's a certain natural tendency. we know for instance in this election that fred thompson isn't going to be president of the united states or rudy giuliani nor john edwards. we know that now. we didn't know that a couple years ago. elections look very different if you look at the record while they are going on as opposed to

after the votes have been counted. most political commentators today summarize the election of 1932 led saying it was inevitable. the depression made of roosevelt's election inevitable, even herbert hoover knew that and in his own memoir he says he knew he was going to lose that election he just had to fight on to the very end. well, pretty shortly after i started doing my research the fact of the matter is very astute political commentators in 1932 were convinced that hoover had a good chance and the economy would be doing by to be better by 32 and franklin roosevelt was a weak candidate to be running against income. people like walter wittman 1932 as the campaign was getting under way.

the candidates to oppose roosevelt to the democratic nomination if anyone of those other candidates had won the democratic nomination the democrats might very well have run a candidate to the right of herbert hoover in the election of 1932. if that happened to the progressive republicans were ready to run an independent third-party choosing mayor bloomberg. there's always a possibility of the candidate getting in for the race, and because the economy collapsed, the socialist party and a lot of other radical party stop that they were going to do terrific in 1932, the public would turn to them and increase their numbers. the socialists were projecting a would get twice the votes they ever had before. the communist party said they were going to get a million votes in that election. so, at least in the beginning of 1930 to the end of it looked very different. but of course we know that franklin roosevelt won. even though it's not inevitable that he was going to win, there

are some skills that he demonstrated in that election that show why he wants. how he campaigned and how he connected to the voters and that is one of the issues that i try to deal with in this book. before going back to the story, i should tell you a little bit about the research much of which happened in this building in downtown in the manuscript room and the newspaper reading room and other sections i started out of course by trying to read as many books about roosevelt and hoover and about the great depression as it possibly could. there is no end of literature on those subjects. but then of course, if you are writing a new book you have to file a new perspective on these things. you have to demonstrate that there is a reason to read your book as opposed to all these other books on the subject. and so, i began looking at the oral history many of which are here in this library. i began looking at - collections downstairs and i began to look at personal memoirs especially

the journalists who would cover the campaign. my last book was about the history of the washington press corps so i was particularly interested in the reports that i had been studying how do they proceed hoover and roosevelt in that particular election. it was wonderful into the various candidates and the subjects. i also went to the hoover and the rose about libraries. but by chance i started back words of the truman library. i was at the truman library giving a speech about my last book and i had the morning there and i went down to the reading room and asked what do they have on herbert hoover and was because it was harry truman who brought him back into the government in 1945 and gave him a number of assignments and became a terribly close friend of his. one thing i discovered by the way is that in addition to the hoover respondents there were boxes and boxes of letters from people saying what are you doing

bringing hubert de bet -- herbert hoover back, she began to have an impact on me and the understanding in the public perception of hoover who won by a landslide in 1928 and 1932 but it also indicates how long resentment can linder and how that can affect the american political prisons. it's true harry truman brought to herbert hoover back in but when he went to campaign he campaigned as much against hoover as he did against thomas dewey and made a lot of references to the depression. hoover was somewhat hurt by that and he said that was just politics you shouldn't have paid any attention to it at all. there are different ways of looking at these people from the perspective of the individuals at the time.

certainly in 1928, almost no american would have predicted that herbert hoover would have been the president. he was the great engineer and humanitarian. he was the family doctor. you called a case of national emergency when the great flood hit the mississippi river in 1927 it was hoover who was in charge of the release of the flood. he succeeded in pretty much everything he did except for the presidency of the united states. he didn't quite have the temperament for the job. one of the very few people to recognize this in 1928 at the time that hoover was elected was an old friend of his from their days together in the woodrow wilson administration and that was franklin d. roosevelt. herbert hoover and franklin roosevelt were neighbors in georgetown in 19 teams in the

wilson administration they both worked with jobs in the wilson administration and they were part of the social mid-level government people who got together on sunday night during the war when there was no official entertaining and they would play cards and have the scrambled eggs dinner, have a cocktail or two and got to know each other. they were good friends in those days. in fact, in 1920 there were some democrats who wanted the democratic party to run the hoover roosevelt ticket for the white house. roosevelt felt i was a great idea, there couldn't be a better president than herbert hoover. he wasn't interested and he declared himself to the republican and switched over. he lost the republican nomination but went into the republican administration and by 1928, she was the front-runner for the republican nomination. the same year that franklin ran for governor of new york and when the election was over both

of them had one and so, at that point, roosevelt publicly wished him well but privately he didn't think he was could be a good president because he said hoover is a great administrator. he is terrific when he heads an agency or has a particular problem he froze all of his effort into that and he's all set. but the presidency isn't like that. the presidency will require someone to deal with a new crisis in a half-hour increment and to feel equally confident in handling all of them. he did not think that hoover had that kind of temperament pretty much believe that the hoover administration turned out. my book is about, half of the book is about why he lost and the other is why roosevelt won and i would like to focus on roosevelt and his winning campaign and considering his

historical stature as president i found it very ironic that so many of his contemporaries in 1932 really underestimated his mentor in the politics was governor l. smith who had twisted his arm to run for governor he didn't really want to run that year he wanted to go back and work on getting his legs to move again after his paralysis from polio but smith prevailed and roosevelt came back and smith narrowly lost new york and the election. roosevelt nearly one come so once he became governor, smith thought this is a dilettante. he's not going to be able to handle this. he can go back in the exercise and continue to run the appointees and roosevelt right away said that's not how he intended to operate as governor and he fired owls met's talk temmins including robert moses

and immediate let it be known he intended to run to the state of new york as himself. there were several other locations were politicians including herbert hoover looked on roosevelt as a sort of light weight. his nickname in college was feather duster roosevelt, and that image was white bantering purchase things and people just didn't think fetus wasn't strong enough to become the candidate for president. he became a very successful governor of new york and he won the election in 1935, a huge margin and as soon as he won in 1930, he started laying the groundwork to run for president in 1932. in those days primaries did not generate any delegates. you could one deily kuran and 20

primaries and they're actually chosen by the state party process but roosevelt and his top aides who were louis whole and jim felt that if he got into these as many races as possible and he won as many of them as possible that the states would realize which way the tide was going and get on the board and that is pretty much the policy that he followed. she was a big irish men shaking hands with folks for the year before some of the people from the midwest who were asked why they want to get in the campus because jim came and asked and nobody else did. he's a very gregarious type that collected delegates left and right at that point and he's the governor of the largest state at that time which of the largest number of electoral votes and so they automatically had an advantage over their opponents. but his predecessor the democratic candidate was l. smith who had run in 1928 and smith was the head of the empire state building in those days

which was nicknamed the mt state building because after they built it nobody moved into it. only the observation deck was making money initially and smith was spending all of his time to find space in the building and he really stepped out of politics during the next four years but it irked him to know and to know that his protege was going to get this nomination and he began to think that he deserved it and hoover had been so boon did and now smith jumped into the race and he was very popular among irish catholic voters in particular and squash roosevelt in the massachusetts primary come sit back the momentum that roosevelt had gotten started. and both smith and roosevelt lost the california primary to house speaker john garner and the only reason garner one that is because william randolph hearst the great isolationist had thrown his weight behind

barn are's campaign. what that meant his when the democrats made a convention in>÷ chicago, franklin roosevelt was living in as the front runner h- had zero overwhelmingly a large number of votes but in those days the democrats were required a two-thirds margin to be nominated so he was about 100 votes short. there were five or so top leading opponents one of whomñ?? was the governor of maryland who i am not related to and another one was newton baker who was the former secretary of war in the wilson administration and al smith and william mcadoo and several others. if those five had been willing to coalesce behind any, but there is a good chance they could have stopped roosevelt. if al smith had been willing to endorse anybody other than himself, that personally would have gotten the nomination but as they discovered you can't

beat somebody with nobody. it wasn't enough to stop roosevelt and smith at this stage have come to the conclusion that he should be the candidate to give weight to anybody else. newton baker is an interesting person largely forgotten by history. he was very highly respected in those days and became a secretary of war during world war i. he was a very small frail man that suffered a heart attack but when he got up to the podium he had a way of delivering a speech that could reduce the audience to tears. his papers are here in the library of congress and they were very enlightening and he was frightening to death because he didn't have a clue how to deal with the depression and he kept saying if anybody could tell me how to solve the unemployment problem i would be happy to hear it. he knows a little nothing to promote his candidacy and kept

writing a letter saying he wasn't going to force the hand of fate but that made him more enticing and dhaka competitors and trusted him and everything else and he probably was the leading candidate to have gotten the nomination. even though he was a wilsonian he was broke at the end of the administration to become a wall street attorney and he moved considerably to the right in fact hoover had appointed him to the commission during the presidency so baker wouldn't have been very different than herbert hoover. the convention was probably the high point of that election in a lot of ways. the first night of the nomination the speeches took so long. it took until 3:00 in the morning before they held their first road and roosevelt was way ahead would still 100 votes with

in the two-thirds and to try to get the momentum that 4:30 in the morning. it's time to adjourn the house that people said we've got to push it to get another vote out of this which was probably a big mistake because they pushing the third vote they didn't give rosebud's delegates time to waver so about 9:00 in the morning or 8:30 they had the last vote and then at 9:00 the send everybody home to sleep off until the next evening. people around the country were listening on the radio all night long. radio stations of all these calls from folks that were so excited about being part of this very dramatic process hearing buck off role been called and the turmoil in the hall. but the fact is roosevelt tenants were in despair that they were close to losing this nomination. they all realized that the key

was william randolph hearst that's the nominal newspaper publisher who had started as a democrat and switched and had gone back to the democrats and started as a radical to become a reactionary and was a hard person to pin down except he knew what he didn't like and in those days in particular he didn't like anything internationalist and he was afraid in some degree of both roosevelt and baker said that's why he supported john garner so the big thrust was to change his mind and everybody, every man more that you read it reduces that they made the call that convinced. [laughter] one of the leading candidates he had a relationship he said he called and said you want baker and he said can't i get donald

ritchie but kennedy replied no the convention if it didn't go to roosevelt was going to go to baker and that is pretty much what everybody said including -- and the thing that really floored me when i'm doing this including herbert hoover. hoover was quite nervous about a baker who he thought would be the most -- the strongest candidate. he thought franklin roosevelt would be the weakest candidate. in the diary of his press secretary he said our salvation lies largely in the nomination. i am afraid of baker said he had the white house staff call the head of the republican delegate and get the mayor to call her stand tell him that he better switch votes to roosevelt. he also had mary ann davis under contract at that time. [laughter] so it's hard to say exactly what convinced him that the speaker

gardner was that here in washington at the time and so was the top political reporter. the only convention that he missed between 1908 and when he died of the republican convention in 1960 the only when he missed was the republican convention in 1932. at 11:00 in the morning, he got a telegram from the hearst organization tell garner that the chief believe nothing can save the country but for him to throw his vote to governor roosevelt. he went to see the speaker and the speaker agreed to pull out of the race. 3:00 that afternoon the speaker called his top lieutenant sam rayburn and the convention told him he was getting out of the race. they said the texas delegation wouldn't stand for that and the only way they would put up with it is of the speaker agreed to run for vice president. to lead the speaker of the house realize that by gaveling the presidential politics she was going to have to give up one of the most powerful jobs in washington that went into the least powerful this is before

cheney. [laughter] and that's what happened. he became the vice presidential candidate. so that might the vote in california and texas went to result in devotee climbed onto the bandwagon accept for all smith who absolutely refused. he had 109 votes in the ballot and win friends asked him to withdraw he said i won't do it, you want to do, and he left the convention before roosevelt ever got there which suggested there is a good chance the democrats could have gone into that election as fractious as they had gone into other elections. at this point roosevelt flew to chicago and it took nine hours to fly from chicago and it was considered a dangerous thing to do actually but he wanted to issue that he wasn't going to be down the old fashioned traditions and requiring

dramatic action. he came before the convention and he said the planned action of enlighten the international outlook and of the greatest good for the greatest number of people then he pledged a new deal for the american people. his speech writers had lifted that from being published under the title in new deal and they did it as a throwaway line without realizing how it would catch up and the editorial cartoonists were looking for a legal on the new deal bourn as a result. hoover used to mock roosevelt because he wrote his own speeches but the speech was really excruciating. and roosevelt was always tremendous and have the policy of sitting down with his brain trust the academics writing the speeches batting around ideas and having them read a couple of

crafts and he would get it back and change it around. by that time roosevelt got the speech he practically memorized it and he had it in his own words and was with the inflections and the way that he delivered that personalized the speeches. today we probably have less chance to hear an entire speech by a presidential candidate than the voters did in 1932. the broadcast of the entire speeches rather than a few sound bites of what those speeches are but as will rogers point out, the next day there wasn't a single person that could repeat to sentences in any of those speeches. it was and the details of the speeches that the impressions. roosevelt always had a very forward minded progressive optimistic way of dealing with things and also a great sense of humor which is an enormous advantage he had over herbert hoover ending any kind of fury

to the speech. i did a radio program for c-span in which they played some of hoover's speeches and his style is to race from the beginning to the program and then take a breath at the end of the period and raced through the next sentence. he was very shy. he didn't like large audiences. roosevelt by contrast loved speaking to a large audience. actually, the democrats wanted him to stay and give speeches on the radio and they were afraid that because of the physical condition he might fall at some point and there would be photographs of what makes him look weak but nothing is going to stop him and for all of the speeches on the major issues nobody gave a speech about roosevelt although everybody talked about it they didn't speak about that. polio had been a front-page story that most americans didn't realize how little he could

walk. he made it a point of never being photographed of his wheelchair. he wore leg braces and walked with a cane and usually on the arm of some of the tall and strong and he was photographed standing up. the editorial cartoonist always showed him running and jumping some people thought well he was lame from polio but not paralyzed. so he presented himself in a very healthy and vigorous manner. the person that looked all of in the newsreels was herbert hoover who had run himself ragged staying up late trying to get the country out of the depression and he age of leased by 20 years in all accounts in his four years as president. at one point hoover looked at a news real and hid of himself and said he looked 82-years-old but roosevelt by contrast looked rigorous at that time. roosevelt campaigned on hope. he promised that collectively

the food government assistance and programs for relief, reform and recovery americans could get themselves out of the depression. hoover, buy contrast campaign of fear that things could have been worse if he hadn't been president, fear that roosevelt experimentation would make the depression deeper rather than get us out of the depression. the strategy puzzled the roosevelt aides who said how can use terkel a man who's been sleeping on the floor by telling them he is going to roll well fed? roosevelt at least was offering some positive change and that was the message that came across even though in fact his speeches were often quite inconsistent. historians were very critical when they would go back and try to figure out what is that he meant when he was campaigning. roosevelt knew he wasn't going to solve the problem with a speech in topeka. the speech had 17 different authors and they all had

different ideas some of which actually conflict with each other which is somewhat similar to the legislation that roosevelt sent to congress but with the farmers got out of it is that they were granted it a top priority in the administration, which he did. hoover, listening on the radio wrote these down and gave them to the secretary of agriculture and expected the secretary of agriculture to elect for hincapie -- campaign for him to reduce lead in the campaign before he realized what a strong opponent roosevelt was and he rushed to get into the race in the rose garden campaign income in the last month of the election as a result it didn't work. when the election was held he won 67% of the vote and carried all but six states and an enormous number of democrats and to the house of representatives,

100 a large number into the senate so that he would have a huge working majority on both sides of the of. interestingly enough, the socialist party did terrible. they thought the voters were going to turn to them to the didn't want to overturn the system they wanted to repair the system. so actually, norman thomas ran the rest of his ticket for the socialist party and voted for the candidates for governor in congress but in the white house along the way. and the communist party got intent and decided the capitalist fraud and do not plan to put some paid anymore. the people that signed petitions in 1932 had a heck of a time explaining it in 1952 when joe mccarthy was investigating all of that. well, but the election took place in november because of the constitutional situation in march to read a lot of my story has to do with those when they

tried to work together but it was dissolved because of the election and by the time they got to the inaugural parade and they were on the road together they practically were not speaking to each other anymore. hoover never went back to the white house during the 12 years as president and spent the rest of his career trying to justify his administration writing memoirs and giving speeches against to the new deal and hoover looked to be 90-years-old and said he outlasted the bastards but the fact of the matter is they would continue to run against herbert hoover anna roosevelt did in 36 and in 44 even though he wasn't on the ticket all of the democratic candidates did it. the accused president bush and being the first president since

herbert hoover to have a net loss of jobs in the administration. president bush responded by saying they had turned a corner and john kerry said that's what hoover said and it doesn't resonate with voters. afterwards most voters couldn't distinguish between herbert hoover and jay edgar hoover so they didn't know what he was talking about and 7% of the american public can identify hoover and the great depression saw as a campaign issue they would really retire. it doesn't work anymore. but it certainly for a very long time it helped them until 1980 when the democrats themselves had an engineer and a lighthouse and he was defeated by an old new deal democrats who voted for franklin roosevelt in 36 and 40 and 44 before she'd become a

republican and then as the predators returning to franklin the lamarca and i think it explains a lot about the success of the campaign and the administration that he models himself in many ways and he made it a point to say he wasn't interested in the new deal but with a big impact over time. i think this year the candidates of both parties can learn a lot from roosevelt to rid of the way that he reached out disaffected voters in the party and a lot of republicans were brought into the collision. the way that he brought the base and unified his own party the considerable effort that he went to in the campaign speeches, the way that he connected with his audiences and he personalized the issues even if he was vague about the specifics because

frankly he wasn't sure what he was going to do about most of those things i think the candidates need to give a sense of direction and a sense of purpose and priorities. voters need to trust that they can follow them down the right path even if they don't have a road map. in 1932, weld dirty beat walter wittman said of the art was without any important qualifications would very much like to be president of the united states. in 1945 just a few days before roosevelt died, she said the roosevelt estimate of the national interest had been accurate and farsighted. "he served as interests with audacity and patient with miscalculation and he has what to do this country out of the greatest peril that it's ever been to the highest kind of its security influence and respect which it has ever obtained. let's help the candidates in this year's election can measure up to that assessment at the end of their administration.

thank you very much. [applause] we do have time for questions. a microphone is going to be handed out. >> these days we are inundated with polls. i know there was at least one national poll for the literary digest but were their others and what do they predict about that election? >> it didn't start until 36. it was in the distance at that point. the literary digest which is a weekly magazine had the most popular polls and they had been right in 24 and 28 they were very close to that. they spent several million and got back i think 15% of the balance that they sent into the in the survey with the opinions were and the initial as it went week by week, roosevelt continued to increase and it was

quite interesting they showed how people had voted for years earlier and roosevelt was getting 36% of the vote in the poll from people who voted for hoover years earlier. we remember in the 1936 election when they said that he was going to overwhelmingly beat franklin roosevelt because how were they so accurate and 32 and so inaccurate in 36 descend the polls to people which in the great depression a great mass of workers were not going to get a vote in this election. the best we can figure is in 32 all economic groups voted for roosevelt in the same proportion as rich people, middle class people and poor people voted for roosevelt at 57%. by 1936 because of the new deal and because of the taxing policy, roosevelt supported have fallen off considerably supporting the middle they had

gotten way out and so they didn't get to that and in 36 it was so far they ran a red cover but that didn't help. [laughter] yes? >> thank you, mr. ritchie. first there is a story that may be apocryphal about the campaign finance that relatively few people endowed fdr's campaign through money and three ambassador kennedy who gave $50,000 which would be probably close to a million adjusted for the cost of living. did your research uncovered anything about the campaign finance? my other question is steve kneal in his book on the same subject happy days you are here again

suggest that james farley offered the vice presidency to governor ritchie and former governor harry byrd of virginia before the deal was initiated. would you comment? >> steve kneal is a good friend and wrote a book called happy days are here again just of the democratic convention and was a very dramatic. actually, the vice presidency ever ready at the convention who had enough votes and governor ritchie, richie was quite convinced that l. smith was going to throw the nomination to him, so it would have been roosevelt, richie appeal the provision would have been and he would have got the white house but unfortunately he didn't. so far as campaign financing is returned to the concerned, there were not a lot of people that have money to give and with republican and democratic party

got a lot less money than they did in 1928. the republicans suffered a really major loss. they had a handful of big money. bernard and others gave a large sum of money but so interestingly enough a lot of conservative republicans gave money to roosevelt. people like pierre dupont who was about as conservative as you could get in those days because he was for the repeal and roosevelt was not. provision accounted for 15% of all of the tax revenues and they were convinced if the provision continued that they would have to pick up the slack in terms of taxes so on the tax issue and the provision issue roosevelt got a lot of money and support from the conservative business interest rate they were also trying to get money down in hyde park, so they were looking for money they could get from any source.

neither party had a lot of money. the cabinet offices had to pay for their radio time and that conscripting the campaigning considerably. >> [inaudible] >> in 1928, hoover had backtracked on the traditional republican position on human rights to some degree because he felt that l. smith was going to alienate a lot of the traditionally southern democratic voters and hoover talked about civil service which is a code word for we are meant to get rid of patronage and hoover carried seven southern states even though he had a pretty good record he abolished segregation when he was the secretary of commerce but that wasn't the way that he campaigned. in 32 the magazine of the naacp

tried to get the democrats to write an endorsement of roosevelt and nobody would. a lot more concerned about roosevelt. they didn't know where he stood and he was running with a segregation a list on the ticket so hoover wound up getting three of every four votes income 1932. in 1936 roosevelt got three out of four between 34 to 36 some programs were not specifically directed by social security didn't get money for the domestic farm hand and that was because of the congressman that controlled the key committees. but a lot of federal programs did help blacks as well as rights and they decided the new

deal was on their side. at 32 nobody talks about it. it's not a major issue and there were not a huge number because most southern black voters were disenfranchised. by 1940, however, the black vote was critical in the campaign to see how it changes during that period. roosevelt has a number of key appointees so the black cabinet in the administration and that also promotes his standing. roosevelt's appointments were more diverse. he appointed a lot more jewish judges and cabinet offices and catholics than any of his predecessors had some people watch what he did though not much was said about it previously.

>> many of the campaigns there is a question for the campaign is about. is it about the character of the nominee or is it about the issues in 1936 for example roosevelt in the opinion was the issue himself rather than the new deal or otherwise and the sounds as if to cons of that character then is that how you look at it? >> he had a wonderful personality to be among other things, roosevelt couldn't give hand gestures because when he spoke to were parallel on his podium and he was propping himself up when he spoke so you'd never see pictures of him pointing the way to the traditional politicians he learned how to throw his very broad shoulders back and his head up with his wonderful images so it looked good on the

news reels with a look at the tank steps and the backs of the train when they would stand up there and banter with of the voters but he would watch with the crops were and how good the corn looked or whatever and began the same speech at every stop so it was like a family gathering little boy jimmy about 6-foot five and he was holding at that stage and he got a laugh out of what would have been possibly a detriment to the state situation. he really predict a sense of optimism their will on the train not knowing when they went into certain areas how well they would be received. and people came to see him dressed in very ragged clothing. it was pretty obvious but roosevelt gave them something to look forward to and i thank the

was the real part of that particular campaign. hoover by contrast felt like he was back, funeral train because they were so somber. one interesting contrast mrs. hoover, she campaigned with her husband of every stop and she was quite popular to read she never gave a speech. a la roosevelt was ambivalent about her husband's election. she didn't want to lose her independence and she didn't like being in the smoke-filled trains and standing behind a candidate so she left the train and sending back to teach my class. she was teaching school in new york at the time so while she was a very active first lady she wasn't an active campaigner and i suspect -- i can't prove this but i suspect she may have cast the vote for norman thomas and

not election. [laughter] yes? question in the back? >> you mentioned in your talk about the broadcast on the convention and people's retial speeches. is very much of that material still preserved and can you comment on your use of that material? >> it's surprising how much is included. in the back of my way include one of the radio speeches and hoover's barre last speech. i chose them because they were typical and there were the shortest speeches they gave because they couldn't afford to pay for much but we do have recordings of the speeches and roosevelt had this invoice that projected beautifully. in 1928 hoover had the advantage because l. smith had an accent

and he sounded for and on the radio whereas hoover even though he wasn't a dramatic speaker sounded to the midwest and all-american and the was an advantage like he was campaigning against a pipe organ that he was such a magnificent or later and hoover had a voice as a cbs producer said of the man who didn't like to talk and it didn't help him in the fight to read the speeches by the way read much better than they listen and in fact if you just read the speeches they made a lot of sense. the argue that roosevelt was able -- his speeches were totally contradictory and conflict them and there were straightforward. if you really want to sit through one of herbert hoover's the five speeches they were not the most popular. in great account of how much the audience left while the president was speaking they wanted to be there to say i've heard enough.

[laughter] question in the back. i know in 1930 the democrats took control of congress after not having had control for a long time to be a lot of promise about trying to change and nothing happened because of the grid lock which has some parallels to today was the market conkers's inability to really do much to factor out all on the elections. >> in the 1930 elections the republicans actually maintained a majority in both the senate and the house. but it took about a year between the election and when the new congress is sworn in and the members died in the house including the speaker and the special elections got worse and worse in 1931 the democrats won more and more elections. by the time they met in december of 31 democrats have a free vote majority in the house. hoover suggested the democratic republicans give up the majority

that they have a one-vote majority and let them run both sides so that the owners would be on them to produce a legislative proposal. they are not about to go along with that. and hoover did try to campaign against congress. basically congress was a radical force and congress was desperate to help hoover in fact pretty much everything that he asked for in that period but there was a certain amount of gridlock he vetoed a lot of bills and a lot of things that didn't happen while in hoover's presidency were sent back by the new congress to roosevelt and roosevelt signed in the first 100 days the reason there was a productive is that he was thinking of all of those things, they were generating those things that had been vetoed by the previous president and that had a follow-up and the others as well but not as dramatically as 1933. there were 100 freshmen members they would do anything the president wanted, and the first day the new congress met in the

banking bill the house passed it that morning. the senate passed it that afternoon and that my. the one thing that is certain is that nobody in congress read that bill. they just wouldn't go whichever way the bill affected the banking system and the federal deposit insurance and all the rest of these things have influenced the way that we are used to our banking system so it was a very positive step forward and was a turning point in the depression. congress in the beginning was ready to go even the republicans had voted. they were unpatriotic to be opposed to the president at that stage, so it is very few in the united states with much good will as roosevelt did because everybody figured we had to do something to get out of the depression and the administration fit that bill. >> did roosevelt promised to balance the budget?

>> he did in october of 1932 he gave a speech which he promised in balancing the budget but four years later when he went back to read the speech and tell them how to respond to it and they read the speech and advised him that category denied that he never given net. but after the banking bill the second past the economy and government and actually roosevelt slashed down the salaries and the veterans' pensions and of the fifth deflationary thing to do in the midst of the depression but roosevelt's dealing was the money needs to go out to the economy so after he balanced the budget technically by slashing the government funds he than began to pour the money into the federal relief programs and so this was in both ways. ronald reagan said the reason he left the democratic party is because the change that initially he was a balanced budget family friend when roosevelt but actually ronald reagan's father ran the wpa

office in illinois and depended very much on his livelihood of spending in the new deal. i think it is a certain amount of personal revisionist history when he wanted to remember it that way. thank you. [applause] cheers a look at books being published this week. the professor of neurology

tell us what you think about our programming this week. here's a look at upcoming book fairs and festivals around the country.